The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson tries to reduce House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s, R-Wis., budget into just one question: “What’s the best way to reduce the deficit by cutting government health care spending without doing something too unpopular?” This misses the point of Ryan’s budget entirely.

Yes, the Ryan budget contains significant reforms to Medicare and Medicaid that do reduce government spending. But it also touches so many more areas than that. Here is how Ryan describes the effort in The Wall Street Journal (emphasis not in original):